The large island of Crete, south of Greece, was home to the Minoans (who did not speak Greek), the first Aegean kingdom. By about 2000 B. C.E. Minoans were building elaborate palaces that had running water and drainage in most rooms. They had a highly developed society with a complex religion.
The Minoan culture eventually overlapped with the more aggressive Mycenaeans-named by historians for the city of Mycenae on southern Greece’s Peloponnese Peninsula. Historians consider the Mycenaeans to be the first ancient Greeks, connected to the future
Greek civilization by language and religion. The Mycenaean era lasted roughly from 1600 to 1200 B. C.E., and it gave the Greeks the glorious legends of King Agamemnon and Achilles fighting at Troy, and of Odysseus traveling home from the Trojan War. The Mycenaeans, it is believed, absorbed the Minoan kingdom, and Crete later became part of the Greek Empire.
What Are Connections?
Throughout this book, and all the books in the Great Empires of the Past series, you will find Connections boxes. They point out ideas, inventions, art, food, customs, and more from this empire that are still part of our world today. Nations and cultures in remote history can seem far removed from our world, but these connections demonstrate how our everyday lives have been shaped by the peoples of the past.
During the 12th century B. C.E., chaotic invasions disrupted the Mediterranean region. It is not known exactly what or who caused the disruption of the Mycenaean civilization, and there is a gap of several hundred years in the history of the entire Mediterranean region about which very little is known-a time some historians have referred to as a Dark Age. But by the mid-eighth century B. C.E., the descendants of the Mycenaeans had begun forming city-states around the Aegean Sea and were sending forth emigrants who spread their language and culture via new colonies around the Mediterranean.
World History
